This is a high-rise hotel several miles back from the coast, in the Licun area about halfway between the airport and Qingdao proper. I stayed here for two weeks on business and paid about $85 a night.

Since my stays in Qingdao are becoming more frequent, I decided to try this hotel out as a lower-cost alternative to the Shangri-la, (which is nice but costs double this for a bunch of stuff I don't even have the time to enjoy anyhow). The room itself was on a par with an American hotel of the same price range: clean, reasonably spacious, & functional, but not swanky. The furniture was in good shape but the carpet was a bit stained. The bathroom fixtures were modest but kept in perfect working order; when the shower control handle broke it was fixed summarily without even having to ask. The staff was dutiful & courteous.

The common facilities were, similarly, functional but not snazzy. The exercise room & pool were nice enough, but don't open until 8:30am. The breakfast ($6 extra) had a good assortment of fruits, vegetables, eggs, bacon, sausage, cereal, etc. I didn't try the restaurant for supper.

A Shenzen Airlines ticket office is in the lobby. They display a UnionPay logo which means they should be able to take Discover Card, but they can't. That doesn't even surprise me anymore. The only non-Western businesses that take credit cards in China are hotels and places set up to commit fraud, so after check-in I lock them in the hotel safe. No worry, there are ATM's about 100 feet to the south.

Internet was included. Ping times, at 65 ms to the US, were some of the fastest I have seen in China, and you get a real (not NAT) IP address. But the DHCP lease times are short; if your computer goes to sleep mode for even a minute you have to renew your connection. My Palm PDA couldn't sniff out any Wi-Fi anywhere.

The location is not near the coast, and though about half as far, the layout of the highway system means it takes just as long to get here from the airport as downtown Qingdao. It is reasonably close to the Tsing-Tao (i.e., Qingdao) brewery. Hailing a cab here (or Qingdao generally) is not as easy as Shanghai, nor are cabbies as knowledgeable about the lay of the city as in Shanghai. The management doesn't do much beyond the ordinary to compensate for the isolated location, leaving it to the staff to call in taxis ad-hoc. The resultant isolation is mitigated a bit by the bus hub at Licun square about a block to the south (with the blue wavy sculpture, not the red fiery one) . Bus 303, for example, has its other terminus at the rail station. Bus 230 goes to the eastern beaches. The buses can be almost unbelievably crowded, but if you just can't hail a cab...

I did not see a single other person of Western extraction in the hotel or the surrounding streets (or anywhere but the beach, and they were Germans) the whole time I was there, nor did anyone beyond the reception desk speak any English. So if you go ambling about the nearby streets, as I like to do, look for a restaurant with pictures on the menu, and know how to say "ching djeh-guh" (please this) and "doo-oh shaow" (how much?). Most interesting to me was a very modest Hui (Chinese Muslim) restaurant around the corner on Da Lao Rd which served up a nicely spicy rice and meat (looked like...pork?!) dish for a mere 85 cents.

The upside to this hotel's isolated location is that, refreshingly, I was not solicited by any working girls the entire time I was there (though they are clearly available, since a steady stream of them were scurrying in and out the elevator). And the hair salons really are hair salons, not brothels.

In conclusion, this hotel is not the nicest available, nor is it particularly well-suited to cater to English-speakers. The location is inconvenient for tourists. But the facilities are reasonably complete and it is a sensible choice if you are on a budget and need good Internet and a place get some work done.